Sustainability Trends in Home Laundry: Challenges and Opportunities for Textile Chemists

Abstract:

Considering a life cycle of consumer apparel, the largest energy consumption is not in fiber production, not in fabric manufacturing and even not in textile wet processing such as dyeing/finishing. It is in home laundry. Making home laundry more sustainable has become a common goal for laundry industry, appliance industry, government agency and consumers. Four mega trends in home laundry resulted from energy saving and sustainability efforts are: a) lower washing temperature, b) less water usage, c) less petroleum chemicals and d) more mechanical actions. These trends are fundamentally changing the landscape of consumer apparel performance in home laundry such as wrinkle formation, color fastness, dye transfer stain removal, soil re-deposition, whiteness maintenance and many more. These trends not only provide textile chemists with challenges, but also opportunities for textile innovations.

• Periodical: Advanced Materials Research (Volume 441)
• Pages: 778-778
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMR.441.778
• Online since: January 2012
• Authors: Ji Ping Wang

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